working towards perfection (and failing)

Tag: The Blogger
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2015 was the year of the Baby Niece. It was also the year of the spiralizer, but no, I don’t own one.

I flirted with the internet, using paying blogging platforms. One just upped and left with $48 of my hard-earned cash and the other is flirting back with me. I go by Poppylicious. My anonymity still means the world to me. I discovered survey sites and earnt lots of Amazon vouchers to spend on Christmas presents. I rock. Sometimes.

The Blokey turned the big Four Zero. Our kidney continues to do well.

I went to Wales. I went to Belgium. I lost weight with Dukan. I enjoyed a bit of Yorkshire hilly regions. We laughed with a real-life Bill Bailey. The boiler broke and then got fixed. The cats don’t argue quite so much anymore.

Work is slightly pants. It might get pantier, it might not.

Yes, I made that word up.

I am going to endeavour to write more here in 2016. I like writing on sites where I get paid, but I sometimes feel that I’m only writing or commenting to make money, and likewise, that people are only commenting on my posts to make a bit of extra cash. That isn’t what blogging is about to me. To me it’s simply about putting a little piece of myself out there, for the world to see. Or not. It makes me feel more valued, gives me a purpose. Besides, we’re paying for this domain; I should use it more often!

So, happy new year. I’ll be spending mine in bed, snuggled up with Blokey because he has Man-Flu. Huzzah!

I am full of quirky ideas. Some people may consider my views of the world to be extreme in their naïvety, but I’m not going to apologise for these views.

I believe that we are all genuinely good at heart, even the most evil of us. All of us have the capacity to love and to feel, and to be loved in return. We may not always be deserving of that love but the potential is there.

I believe that we should all be forgiven for our mistakes, even those which make some people despise us. Without forgiveness it’s impossible for folk to truly learn from their mistakes. Hate the sin, love the sinner. To err is human. All that jazz.

I believe that we are all worthy of second chances. People are not one dimensional; there are layers upon layers upon layers to every single human. Situations, conversations, and experiences all change us. We can change from ‘good’ to ‘bad’ and back to ‘good’ a plethora of times in a single day.

I believe there is no black and white, and there are more than fifty shades of grey. We are all entitled to view the world as we see fit, even when that view is wrong. It is education and perseverance, understanding and trust which enables us to choose a more stable, sustainable path in life.

I know that some people think I look at the world through rose-tinted spectacles but I actually believe I’m just a realist. Good and bad exist. Brainwashing exists. People are always searching for the greener grass or the path to heaven. We can’t hope for society to right its wrongs if we simply label everyone and say they can’t deviate from that label, ever. Reasoning, understanding, empathy … they all play a big role in our existence, and sadly we aren’t all able to attribute these to everyday life.

I trust that you are happy with yourself, that you sleep soundly after rubbing your hands together in glee at the frightful mess you made of my life.

I know that you’ve been whispering in the ear of 2015, making silly suggestions about how best to fuck up the next twelve months, but it won’t work. 2015 thinks you’re petty and vindictive. 2015 craves my love and wants me to be happy. In the battle of the years 2015 will always beat you, of that I’m sure.

I’m really sorry that you failed in your quest to make me SO miserable and SO frightfully sad that I’d cave in to my emotions. I am obviously far stronger than you gave me credit for.

I do wish you well, 2014. You taught me to hold my head up high, to trust my instincts and to love unconditionally. For that, I salute you. You showed me wickedness, but couldn’t make me crumble. For that, I salute myself.

Here’s hoping that 2015 is happy and humble, innocent and beautiful. I raise a glass to you, 2014, and banish you to The Past, for ever.

I’m writing this blog post from the comfort of my own bed, because I can.

When I returned to work following my amazingly short seven weeks off, I discovered that a perk of spending all day with arrogantly ridiculous young people comes in the form of an iPad. I am not an Apple nerd. I have owned several iPods during my lifetime, and indeed, I have an iTunes account. But anything else? No, sir. No thank you.

I’m quite enjoying having an iPad to do work-y stuff on, but unlike my friends I’m loathe to make use of it for personal gratification. After all, I am the gal who’s only been on Facebook twice in the nearly three years of working there and I get desperately paranoid that my every move (literally, in games) will be scrutinised by the IT bods.

So, I returned home last Monday and declared that I wanted to own a tablet on which I could do all the stuff I do on the desktop. Yesterday I bought one as an extravagant present to myself. It isn’t an iPad. Fuck that. It’s a Samsung Galaxy Tab Pro and it’s a gorgeous little piece of fun. I’ve been playing with it all afternoon whilst Blokey indulges in Star Wars games online. I even managed to find a fabulous Kurt Vonnegut wallpaper for it and I think I’ll probably blog more, if I can find some lost oompf.

*contented sigh*

My weekend of money spending didn’t end with the tablet though. I also had my eyes tested for the first time in ten years and very soon I’ll be the proud mummy of TWO pairs of glasses (bogof). I like wearing specs; they make me feel intelligent, but I only really need them for being able to see the distant world, and the tellybox.

I don’t have a problem with being forty years old. I feel no different to how I felt the day before I turned forty, when I was only thirty-nine. Indeed, I feel no different to how I felt when I turned twenty-one, except I’m now minus a left kidney and I have creaky knees.

That panic attack I had earlier in the year about turning forty seems a tad ridiculous now.

One of the best aspects about being forty is that I can embrace the older lady who lives inside me (with the skinny one, and the teenager – the arguments they have!) … that old lady is thinking she can do what she wants, when she wants.

New tattoo? Why stop at just one?!

New piercing? Absolutely (don’t get excited, nowhere odd – just an ear again, hopefully, one day, before forty-one knocks at the door!)

A few grey hairs? Sod it, they might look elegant and distinguished if I put away the dye and give them a chance.

I am forgetful, and I appear to have a problem with my hearing. I should probably get my eyes tested again (it’s only been ten years since they were last looked at) and I love my afternoon naps (but not how I feel when I awaken from them.)

My boobies aren’t saggy yet, but give them time. They’ll catch up with the idea of being old soon.

I stopped seeing the counsellor. I stopped liking her and opening up about myself made me anxious. Talking made me anxious. I was making myself feel small and stupid, and I don’t want to feel small and stupid so I’m back to locking myself away from the world and pretending that life is hunky-dory and wonderful. But it’s okay; it’s my choice and I’m happy with that choice. I feel comfortable in this skin because it’s a skin I’ve lived in for so long.

If people knew what I was living with they’d be horrified. I’m an amazing actress.

I’m on holiday now – no more work till the beginning of September. It’s a fabulous perk of working in education but this year I feel it’s going to both drag and speed by, in equal measures. A part of me would rather be at work, even though I adore my time off and never want it to end. I have no concrete plans. Occasional shopping trips and luncheons with friends. I have The Vampire Diaries and Skins box-sets to catch up with, and my garden needs a through tidy.

My MiL has been diagnosed with lung cancer, admitted to Hospital and had nearly half her lung removed in the last few weeks. Speedy. She appears to have gone from thirty-ish cigarettes a day for the last forty years, to none a day. We’re not convinced this will last. The lung doctor told her that the cancer has all gone (obviously she’ll have regular check-ups for the next five years) and that it may not have been the fag addiction which caused the cancer. I think she just hears what she wants to hear.

… in a not-so far away land, lived a girl with an insatiable need to write about herself for all the world to see. Oh, she had kept diaries in the past, but these were full of silliness and teenage-angst. Nobody ever read those diaries. Nobody ever will, until our heroine is dead and buried. She tried various means of introducing herself to the world at large, but finally settled on Xanga.com.

It was a jovial little place. The girl let people into her head – warts and all – and they still wanted to be her friend. This made her feel all squishy inside. She discovered that the world was very teeny-tiny (one person she befriended was a real life friend of her Baby Brother) and that most folk are completely bonkers and attention-seeking numpties.

She frolicked happily in XangaLand for five and a half years, until the time came to fly the nest. XangaLand shaped the girl into a woman and when her Blokey offered to buy her the katiefinger.com domain, it only seemed fair that it be put to good use.

One day KatieF went back to XangaLand and found that it was gone. GONE! Oh, woe. But it offered our young(-ish) woman the opportunity to download all her posts and save them on her computer. This she did, and then she made a new blog* and now all her old Xanga posts live there.

At some point she will read through those ancient posts and have a laugh, but for now she’s just happy to have seen an occasional snapshot of a life once lived.

The quote in the image above sums it up, pretty much and in a roundabout way. I often write when I’m pissed off or unhappy with some aspect of my life, or when I need time to take stock of all the malarkey. I’m writing for me, to clear my head, sort my emotions out and find a way to understand myself. If I wasn’t writing for me I would have given up a very long time ago, like all the cool kids do.

If someone discovers my blog and keeps coming back to visit then that’s nice. I’ve met some fabulous people through blogging (and some not so fabulous) and without the Internet these are people who would have existed only as strangers, people I would never know. And to know that some of those fabulous people care enough to come back to read is reassuring. It’s comforting. It makes me feel valued. But it isn’t essential for me to have a steady stream of readers. I’m not trying to sell myself; I’m just being me in the best way I know how.

With words.

But if you’re not doing it for money and nobody ever reads your blog (*waves at Lone Reader*) anyway, and you don’t really expect people to read it, what’s the point of keeping it all in the open online?, I hear you ask.

I have an insatiable need to exist. I need to know that when I die I’m leaving something behind. I have both a massive fear and a huge hope that someone in my family/friendship group will stumble upon this blog, realise it’s me, and suddenly ‘get’ me. I anonymously tell the Internet all the things I can’t tell the Real World. I’m not a talker and this is my way of trying to get attention.

Or something equally (im)plausible.

My 31 Days are over. I have a couple of blog posts I desperately need to write because they’re imposing on my head and getting in the way. But they can wait. It’s been fun! See you in November!

“If this carries on, I’ll have to ring the RSPCA [Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals],” she said.

I am not a violent person. I’d rather stick my head in the sand and my fingers in my ears than face confrontation and argument (so saith the lass who deliberately picked fights with her siblings as she was growing up). I also get anxious to the extent that I tie my belly up in knots and wish the ground would swallow me up in some cataclysmically apocalyptic style, so it was with great trepidation – and incredible bravery – that I stalked across the road on Thursday afternoon, knocked on their front door and asked for my cat back.

A terse conversation including the words not seen for 24 hours, worry about her, anxiety, I’ve asked you before, just put her out, it’s not my problem (me) and but you’re at work [um, no I’m not at the moment], she just comes in, can’t put her out in the middle of the night, why don’t you just keep her in [eh?] (her) and I returned home with Dora in my arms. She settled down and fell asleep and I was a big meanie when she later mewed pityingly at the door begging to go out, and I didn’t let her.

I let her out the following morning, spent the day shopping with Mumsy and returned home only to be greeted ten minutes after getting in by a knock on the door.

“It’s that crazy woman,” I said.

It was indeed that crazy woman. “Come and get your cat back,” she said to me. “No,” I answered, “Just put her outside and she’ll make her way home when she realises she’s not welcome.”

The excuses began. She just keeps coming back (her). Well, keep putting her back out (me). It’s cruel (her). It’s not cruel, she belongs to me and I’m asking you not to let her in your house (me). She’s not actually in the house she’s in the conservatory and we can’t shut the windows because it’s too hot (her). That’s not my problem (me). Well, if this carries on I’ll have to ring the RSPCA (her). Excuse me? She’s loved, insured, fed, watered, microchipped and boostered annually; I’m not sure what the RSPCA are going to do (me) …

She hobbled away eventually, perhaps when she realised that she was making me angry. I honestly don’t get her nerve. Still, I seem to have won this particular battle for Dora has been happily playing, sleeping and eating here, and when I called her this evening she came from a direction which was completely opposite to the Crazy Cat-stealing Woman’s house.

I give it two weeks maximum and then no doubt we’ll be embroiled in another battle. It may be Dora at the heart of it … they may try and steal Qyzen next. Either way, Bring It On!

No, I will not buy my Dora-cat a collar with a bell on it. She hasn’t killed four birds, you liar, liar, pants on fire. Perhaps if you refrain from putting cat food out for the other animals she might stop popping over to your house. Crikey, if you stop letting her in your house (I can smell your house on her, you fool!) she might stop popping over to your house and then she won’t be killing the birds (which she doesn’t kill).

Really, do you have nothing better to do than wait for us to come home from a very long day at work (my bus was thirty minutes late, so a twelve hour day became a twelve hour and thirty minutes day, and the last thing I wanted was to be met with your ugly mug) so that you can then come hobbling over to ask us to do something to our cat, when you can’t even be arsed to stop letting her in your house despite our exceedingly nice requests?

… and breathe …

*SCREAMS* < this is me screaming.

I do feel a tad guilty for turning my back on you and walking away, but really … p!ss off!!

Thanks,

KatieF *kisses* (not really)

PS: If either of my babies come home with a collar on it will be going straight in the bin. When you start paying for their insurance, vet visits and cattery costs, I’ll let you buy them collars, with very jingly bells. Until then …

On Saturday we went to see Muse live at the Emirates in London. For some bizarre reason we chose to buy ‘standing only’ tickets, which in retrospect was completely ridiculous. We aren’t young anymore and seven hours of standing doesn’t do our old, tired bones any good. Incidentally, I used to wonder why old people wanted to go to gigs. Now, I’m the old person who gets wondered about. It’s a laugh, this grow’d up lark.

*grin*

But it was brilliant. Bastille weren’t bad (although I’m sure they didn’t play the song of theirs which I like the best, but being stood next to drunk Chelsea-type knobs who were shouting didn’t help with my hearing) and Dizzee Rascal was far more enjoyable than I’d been led to believe. Not enough to go out and spend my hard earned cash on his tunes, but good enough to bop along to in the atmosphere of the moment.

I’ve been trying to remember which bands I’ve seen live. It isn’t many (when compared to lots of people) but it is quite a handful (when compared to yet other people.) The first band I saw live (apart from dodgy local bands who were never going to cut the mustard and rise above the back rooms of greasy flea-ridden pubs) were the Manic Street Preachers. It was the autumn of 1992, I was eighteen and my new boyfriend at my new university took me to Newcastle to see them. I can still recall the way he stood behind me and held me tightly as I stood transfixed by the sight of seeing my idols right in front of me, barely ten feet away. Daft, the things we remember.

That boyfriend lasted just a few weeks and a few months later one of his best mates broke my heart. But that’s by-the-by. I’ve seen the Manics about six times in total, from their humble beginnings in Student Union bars, through their sell-out stadium tours and back down to the smaller venues. They are my most favourite band to see live. Oddly, I rarely listen to them but know all the words to most of the songs, and do consider them to be the best band of all time.

So, who else? Terrorvision, The Wonderstuff, The Damned, Chumbawumba, REM (x2), Pop Will Eat Itself (spoke to Clint, have his autograph), The Killers (second favourite band to see live), Eels, Scouting for Girls, Busted (supported by McFly), Kylie, Bjorn Again (shared post-gig drinks with the band), S*M*A*S*H (shared post-gig drinks with Salv [drinking = common theme apparently] who later briefly joined Carter USM), Robbie Williams, British Sea Power …

It seems so few. And far too eclectic. I also kick myself for missing out on Kasabian playing the diddy venues on their rise to stardom. Blokey doesn’t let me forget my vehement shaking of head when he suggested we see them a few years ago.

*sigh*

I’ve been rooting through my extensive collection of photos on my computer (somebody really needs to stop collecting photos of nothing and start tidying up her files) and found some to share. Nothing special, just an occasional memory.